, 1887-11-20
THE PARIS "perlr JOURNAL"
A Daily Circulation Nearly Reaching
1000 OO-A Remarkable Growth

A Daily Circulation Nearly Reaching
I.oOO,o OO-A Remarkable Growth.
The success of The Petit Journal has
always tempted imitators, but thus far
its numerous competitors nave not sue
ceeded in injuring it. On the contrary,
its circulation steadily increases, and has
now reached the colossal average of $780,
900. Strangers are sometimes astonished
at the remarkable growth of this little
paper-the size of its page is Is by 81
and in any other country it would be a
wonder; but 1 doubt if a newspaper
modelled after The Petit Journal could OBJ
tain such a wide reading public else
where. Certainly it would not do so in
America, where the people wan Jews
or what they think is news-and a good
deal of it.
Now the idea of what constitutes news
is very different in France from what it is
in the United States. Here a newspaper
must first of all give one or more serial
stories every day; in the absence of this
feature it would not sell 100 copies. The
Matin, which was started by American
capital, tried to win a circulation without
printing a story; its founders thought the
displayed headline was what the French
reader craved, but they soon discovered
their error, and the journals success
dates from the day its conductors con-
formed to the French idea.
The story, or feuilleton, is mainly what
has made the fortune of The Petit Jour-
nal, and enabled it to pay not only the
highest price for ''blood and thunder"
tales, but to spend from $40, 900 to $780,
900 in advertising in advance each new
story by R~ichebourg, Montepin, Sauniere,
Boisgobey, etc., who are the French Syl-
vanus Cobbs. When 1 say that a Petit
Journal could not reach such a fabulous
circulation in America 1 mean that its
story feature alone would not be suffi-
cient, because the taste for fiction in the
American daily newspaper is of compare
lively recent date. Besides, the American
wants news first and fiction afterwards,
knowing, perhaps, that he gets a good
deal of the latter with the former.
The Petit journal is a very well edited
paper for a country where the masses are
still u~neducated, or at least not educated
UP to the point of wishing to know every
thing that goes OF all over the world.
They are content to take their news by
the thimbleful and do not complain if it
Is not of the first freshness. They prefer
to V the telegrams-what few there
are-left out rather than be deprived of
their novel; and while some of the larger
journals allow other departments to &C.
casionally crowd the serial story over for
a day the editor of The Petit Journal
would never take such a liberty with his
readers. If he did he would receive sew
eral hundred thousand complaints the
next day from all parts of France. The
net profits of this remarkable enterprise
are now about $500, 900 a year. 1t gives
employment to over II, 900 persons. The
editor is NJ. N. Escoffier, who has been
connected with the paper since its foun-
dalton in 1868. He succeeded Leo Lespes
in 1873. NJ. Escoffier is a clear and con-
else writer, never sacrificing space to
what is commonly called "fine writing"
Charles Seymour in The Epoch.